


All the Love in the World

by DoreyG



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: (I am not personally angry about all the dialogue), (Sorry if this keeps coming up as allcaps), (the tags/my boyfriend's computer keep insisting on it), All the dialogue, Bilbo would be all over mince pies, Boyfriends, Brief mentions of Christmas, Cuddling, Fluff, Human AU, Love, M/M, Modern AU, domestic AU, public affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:10:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know,” it occurs to him one day, out of the blue, and he’s saying it automatically before he can even think of filtering his thoughts or taking a step back or actually <i>holding his tongue</i>, “we’ve become one of those couples that I used to hate.”</p><p>Bilbo, the one who that sentence was directed at, pauses for a second in his magazine flipping. He wrinkles his forehead, he frowns, he looks briefly up in a manner best described as questioning “…Sorry?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Love in the World

“You know,” it occurs to him one day, out of the blue, and he’s saying it automatically before he can even think of filtering his thoughts or taking a step back or actually _holding his tongue_ , “we’ve become one of those couples that I used to hate.”

Bilbo, the one who that sentence was directed at, pauses for a second in his magazine flipping. He wrinkles his forehead, he frowns, he looks briefly up in a manner best described as questioning “…Sorry?”

“Don’t be,” he hurries to say, a little awkwardly, and crosses his arms – leaning back against the kitchen doorframe in a way that he hopes is at least faintly casual but that is probably just incredibly awkward instead, “it isn’t at all a bad thing, I don’t think.”

“…Becoming one of those couples that you used to hate?”

“ _Used_ being the key word,” he protests, with a soft clearing of his throat and a glance down at his toes. He’s getting definitely awkward now – he can feel it in his bones, in his eyes, in the way that his entire body is calling for a slow crawl into a dark corner where he can just curl up and forget everything for a while.

Bilbo frowns a little more, and then slowly folds down the page of his magazine and sets it aside. When he turns back his eyes are focused, determined. He looks like he’s about to grab a shovel and start digging for answers – and he could pretend that he didn’t find that at all attractive, but… “Alright, fair enough. Why are we becoming – or have become – one of those couples that you used to hate with a burning, firey rage?”

“I didn’t say-“

“ _Thorin_.”

His boyfriend knows him far too well. He sighs a little, only a touch grumpily. Pushes himself off the kitchen doorframe and stalks across the room until he can drop onto the sofa next to Bilbo. Who only keeps sitting there calmly, watching him with expectant eyes that are used to his tempers by now, “we live together.”

“You hate co-habitation?” Bilbo arches an eyebrow, looks a little like he wants to snort but holds it back with a noble amount of effort, “my, it’s astonishing that you’re still on such good terms with your sister.”

“I mean that we live together after _three months_ ,” he grumbles, even though he’s used to Bilbo guiding greater meaning out of his grunts by now, and glances down at his feet again – bounces them in his slippers like that’s going to help anything, “out of _choice_. And have already exchanged the ‘love’ word multiple times, and slept together after a _week_ of-“

“Yes, I remember that!” Bilbo snaps, but he knows the difference between that and something properly serious. Bilbo’s cheeks have gone red, but his eyes have gone dreamy. They both remember their first time (his first time _ever_ ) with some fondness – not due to the act itself, for it was bound to be a little awkward, but due to the pure _feelings_ involved, “you think that we moved too fast, then?”

“No!” He still blurts immediately, if a little clumsier than usual due to fond dreams of the past still clinging in his mind, “not at all. I’m just saying… That before I met you-“

“A sad and meaningless time.”

“-I would’ve regarded people who moved in with each other after three months of dating with some suspicion,” he gives Bilbo a guarded glance, coughs a little awkwardly and carries on when it becomes clear that there’s no outburst forthcoming, “and regarded people who used the ‘love’ word after about two and a half months with even more, and regarded people who slept with each other for the first time after a week-“

“I can guess the rest, Thorin,” Bilbo saves him with a wry twist of his mouth, and watches as he takes a deep and faintly guilty breath and keeps staring down at his slippers, “this is unexpected for you, then.”

“Before I met you-“ he coughs again, aware that he’s repeating himself a little “…I would’ve never thought myself the type of person to do any of that.”

“You expected to move in with your hypothetical lover after a year or two of dating, say you loved them a few months after that and have sex only after at least engagement but more ideally a big white wedding with all your family in attendance?”

“…Something like that.”

“Ah,” Bilbo seems to think on this for a few moments. When they first met, just over a year ago to maintain the honesty theme of today, he found that squinting expression of thought faintly annoying. It didn’t take long for the annoyance to fade and the attraction to hit with full force, “What other unexpected things are there?”

He stares.

“…What other things make us one of those couples that you used to hate?”

He stares for a moment more, and then thinks for another moment after that, “we’re affectionate with each other in public?”

“Are we?”

“We kiss all the time,” he argues, not hotly but with some force. Settling back on the sofa and gesturing vaguely at their current closeness, like that’s going to prove anything, “and hug, and hold hands. Just yesterday we had to go to the post office and we held hands all the way, last week you hugged me in the middle of the supermarket when I allowed you to get those mince pies, a fortnight ago my nephews started throwing _popcorn_ at us because we were kissing on their sofa.”

“Oh,” Bilbo blinks a little, seems to consider this for a while. The moments tick by, he starts to get impatient but restrains it with some effort “…And that seems slightly over the top to you?”

“Seemed,” he has to correct again, suddenly struck by the truth of it, “when I was a child I used to glare at my parents every time they held hands, when I was a teenager I threw Dis’ first boyfriend out of the house when they started cuddling in front of me, a few years ago I remember catching Kili kissing a girl and lecturing him about it for the next two weeks.”

“The life of the party, you were.”

He glares, sullenly.

“Alright, alright,” and Bilbo relents with a soft laugh, settling back against the cushions and folding his hands in his lap, “you used to be practically repulsed by physical contact - and then you met me, I showed you the ways of affection and turned your entire world view on its head in roughly three months. I can understand how that might trouble a person, even if I do pretend.”

The glare swiftly turns back to a stare, and then narrowly avoids becoming a glare again. It’s only his affection for Bilbo, and a certain amount of practice due to that affection, that stops him from reacting just as grumpily as he would’ve before, “trouble… Isn’t quite the right word.”

“Well, I’m glad of that at least,” Bilbo says soothingly, sensing his mood in that way that he’s perfected since their acquaintance began, and gently reaches out to lay one small hand over his, “is anything else troub-?”

He actually glares this time.

“…Giving you pause for thought?”

And thinks.

And frowns.

And-

“…The ‘love’ word again,” he confesses. With yet again a little guilt, bowing his head slightly as if praying for forgiveness at some grand alter of Bilbo.

“Oh,” he grants it, of course, because he really is the best boyfriend ever and he often wonders, at least ten times a day, what on earth he did to deserve something so perfect and happiness bearing and almost entirely free of fault, “What about this seemingly mythical ‘love’ word?”

“I used to look down on couples who said it to each other all the time,” he confesses, and looks up again to see Bilbo regarding him with that puzzled fondness that always makes him feel secretly like swooning, “I used to think that they were devaluing the word, or disrespecting their partners by thinking them so lacking in memory that they needed to be reminded every five minutes, or just being obnoxious to all around for the sake of being obnoxious.”

Bilbo continues to regard him with puzzled fondness – but now there’s something slightly more wrinkled about the eyes, something slightly… Sadder, “I suppose that makes some sort of sense-“

“But now it’s changed,” and he can’t allow that to linger. Not for love, nor money, nor everything that he’s ever dreamed of on a golden platter in the shape of a dead man resembling that snakeish Smaug. Bilbo’s sadness is his sadness, when Bilbo feels low he feels lower and when Bilbo is hurt by something he immediately wants to reach out and rip it apart with his bare nails, “I’ve changed, in a way that I must confess is- slightly strange, and scary, and confusing.”

The sadness, thankfully, bleeds away as quickly as it arrived. Bilbo regards him with puzzled fondness again, but this time with adoration as clear as the light of the sun lurking behind, “what sort of way?”

“Now… I know that to tell somebody you love them a thousand times a day is too little, because I love you over a billion times and would have to repeat myself constantly to convey the depths of my emotion,” he has never been a poet, has been mocked for it in the past, but with Bilbo in front of him the words flow naturally – bounce from his tongue as easily as the songs he started singing the day that Bilbo entered his life, “now I know that I remember your love constantly, but that it feels like a sudden rain of gold to hear it from your lips. Now I know that being obnoxious isn’t actually a consideration – because I care nothing for what the rest of the world thinks, and feel only for you and your good opinion instead.”

“…Oh,” and Bilbo’s eyes go even softer, shimmer with something that his widening heart is tempted to classify as happy tears, “Thorin.”

There is nothing else to do but kiss him then, as deeply and thoroughly as possible. It feels good to be kissed, and he doesn’t know how he went without it for so many years of his life. To be kissed properly, deeply and sincerely and with so much love, is the best feeling in the world – better than getting paid for a job well done, better than completing a long and difficult set of exercises, better even than sex. To experience such happiness and adoration is, he’s convinced, the reason why humanity is still standing and breathing and _living_ on this tiny planet spinning around this distant sun.

…And Bilbo, his Bilbo, has helped him to realize that.

“You don’t really mind about the love stuff, then?” The man asks when they part, smiling in an unconscious way. His lips are still wet, glistening where they were properly pressed together. His curls are in disarray, his clothes are a little rumpled from the force of their embrace… And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t _care_.

He smiles, wider than he ever has before, “not at all.”

“…And-?”

“Not the slightest bit,” he leans in – presses that smile to Bilbo’s forehead, his cheek, that little spot beneath his chin that always makes him snort out a laugh even when he’s half collapsed with stress, “it was just a passing and foolish thought, something to be easily dismissed and quickly forgotten. Where I used to hate, now I love. Where I saw only darkness, I now see light. Where I despaired, I now triumph. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I feel that my world is far, far better for it.”

And Bilbo pulls back a little from the skitter of his breath, Bilbo smooths his small hands over his shoulders, Bilbo coughs gently – and Bilbo smiles, brighter than the sun and moon and stars all put together, “you old romantic, you.”

“I haven’t even started,” and he smiles, wider and wider, and leans in for another kiss.


End file.
